The black man and the war ..

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LIBRARY

6f THE

.NOE PAPERS. U*!:V£R$iTY of ILLINO ’ . NUMBER 8.

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Cape GToftm:

THE SOUTH AFRICAN VIGILANCE COMMITTEE,

1900.

VIGILANCE PAPERS.

No. 8 m

THE BLACK

AND

THE WAR.

The Rev. J. S. MOFFAT.

CAPE TOWN :

THE SOUTH AFRICAN VIGILANCE COMMITTEE.

THE BLACK MAN AND THE WAR,

When the American civil war broke out nearly forty years
ago, the question uppermost in men’s minds was that of
State rights. There were points on which the internal rights
claimed by individual States clashed with the general law of
the American Republic. In consequence, certain states
determined to secede from the Union and to declare their
independence. Hence we now think and speak of that
memorable conflict as the War of Secession. The instinct of
the American people as a whole, taught them that way led to-
ruin, and the whole resources of the Union were taxed to the
uttermost in defence of the commonwealth, one and indi¬
visible, with what results we know.

But after the conflict had for a time raged fiercely another
question began to assert itself, the question which really lay
underneath the whole history of the relations between North
and South, the question of slavery. That was really the
basis on which the war was being fought, though for a time
other and merely technical points had been raised, and had
obscured the main issue. According to the Constitution all
men were to be free and equal. The larger half of the Union
had acted upon this fundamental principle, the lesser half
ignored it. So it had come about, that there was nothing for
it but to decide whether the Southern States were to domi¬
nate the whole Union on the basis of slavery as an acknow¬
ledged “ corner stone.” To quote the language of the time
“ The irrepressible nigger would insist on coming to the sur¬
face and demanding attention.”

Abraham Lincoln with the eye of a seer, led the way to
the heart of the matter, and proclaimed as a constitutional
amendment that slavery was a fatal blot that must be wiped
away for ever as an institution in the United States. From
that moment of prophetic decision the issues were clear, and
though some hard fighting still remained to be done, the
Union began to see the dawn, and found the way out of her
darkest night into the broad sunlight of true freedom.

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There is a curious likeness between the circumstances of
that time and our own. Man}’ people will tell us that this is
the war of the Franchise, a matter of mere trifling electoral
details, and according to the trend of their sympathies
they will blame President Kruger on the one hand, or Sir
Alfred Milner and Mr. Chamberlain on the other, for*
forcing the two powers into an unnatural and unjustifiable
conflict over a mere bagatelle. But such people lose sight
of the fact that there are lines of cleavage in South
Africa that go deeper than any question that was raised at
the Bloemfontein Conference or even than the general
attitude of Boer and Uitlander in Johannesburg. There
never has been a time in the history of the century at which
the Briton and the Boer in South Africa have not been at
variance on two questions, regular taxation and the status of
the native. To quote Edouard Naville, speaking of the
Transvaal in regard to the levying of taxes, “ the Boer is an
out-and-out rebel. His doctrine in the matter of finance is*
that tribute must be exacted only from the alien ; this
belief along with the rest of his religion being taken from
the Old Testament.” The difficulty about taxation may be
got over, especially when the Boer finds as he generally
does that wherever the British flag flies every man has a
chance not only to live but even to prosper.

The native problem goes deeper and is more difficult to
deal with. The British notion of the aboriginal man as a
man with all human rights has been a standing occasion of
offence to the Boer ever since the Union Jack has floated in
South Africa. The Boer looks upon the Black as a
“ schepsel,” not as a man. He may have a right to kindly
treatment, like a horse, but legal rights as a human being, No !
Some people do not see the far-reaching results of this
distinction. They ignore the fact that in the lands between
Cape Town and the Zambesi, apart from German and
Portuguese territory, for the eight hundred thousand Euro¬
peans there are upwards of four million of blacks, showing
no sign of decadence, increasing as fast as we are, and learn¬
ing from us some good and much evil. If wTe shut our eyes
to these facts and make no provision for their natural
results, the black men will some day overflow us as the
flood overflowed the contemporaries of Noah. Some such
catastrophe will be the sure result of any attempt to keep
the black man in a servile condition. He will be a destruc¬
tive or a conservative force in the Commonwealth just in
proportion as we withhold or as we give him his rights as a>
man. As long as there are two rival powers in South

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.Africa divided by a line like this, divided by a fundamental

• difference of opinion and of practice on one of the vital
principles of human life, there is a certainty of collision.
The deep underlying antagonism is there and must assert
itself sooner or later, as it has done now.

That there is no exaggeration in speaking of the native

• question as one of the principal causes which have led to the
present war, we see at once if we only look at the present
state of the controversy. The longer the war goes on, the
greater is the disposition shown to bring the native question
to the front. It is urged by those on the British side, that
This war will if successful place the native in the Transvaal
in a far better position : and that Boer predominance would
mean to the native a condition of permanent inferiority and

•servitude. Those whom we have as a matter of distinctness
to call pro-Boer devote much energy throughout the English
press, to show that the condition of the natives in the Cape

• Colony for instance is little, if at all, better there under British
rule than it has been under Boer rule in the Transvaal.

‘One of the most remarkable statements that has appeared is
in the manifesto signed by a body of the most influential
ministers and theological professors of the Dutch Reformed
Church. They contend not only that there is a better under¬
standing between Boer and Black Man than there is between
Black and British, but that the Dutch Reformed has always
been a missionary church in South Africa, and is so at the
present time in a greater degree than any other. It
is out of the question to attribute to these Reverend
Fathers any wilful intention to mislead by saying the thing
that is not, the only other supposition possible is, that they
are profoundly ignorant of the past history of South Africa
. and of things as they are at the present moment.

Take a case in point — the relative position of the natives in
The Cape Colony, and in the Transvaal. The Reverend Charles
Phillips, formerly of Graaff-Reinet, now a refugee from
Johannesburg, has stated the case so concisely and yet so
- clearly that I make no apology for taking over the whole
passage. uTo come to the fundamental policy of the two
•Governments, the essential principles as embodied in their
laws, which regulate their relations to their coloured
subjects, no one dare affirm that the natives are not treated
worse in the Transvaal than in Cape Colony. The difference
•begins with the “ Grondwet,” or Constitution itself :

1st. In its ninth article it is affirmed that there shall be
absolutely “ no equality, either in Church or State,

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between white and coloured.” The natives are the
“ zwart goed,” black goods or property, the schepsels,
mere creatures, the Gibeonites, to be used as the
“ hewers of wood and drawers of water ” for the
white people.

"2nd. They may not walk on the side paths or occupy
other than the trucks or carriages on the railway
specially built for them.

3rd. They may not engage in any kind of trading, such
as hucksters or costermongers. No licence could be
obtained even by an educated and respectable
coloured man for the purpose.

4th. In the land formerly their own, from which they
were expelled or subjugated by a gigantic raid, they
may not own even a foot of land.

5th. Till two years ago there never was such a thing as
a legal marriage among coloured people. When it
was granted, lest it should be thought that there
was the shade of equality at the hymeneal altar, the
preamble introduces the 9th Article of the Grond-
wet, quoted above. It then insisted upon a fee of
£3 to the Government, and so hedged it round with
other restrictions as to put a premium on immo¬
rality, insomuch that all branches of the Christian
Church sent deputations to Pretoria, and worked
desperately for its abolition, preferring the old con¬
dition of things.*

6th. A maximum is done for the education of every
Boer child ; a minimum for every Uitlander child ;
nothing whatever for the native child. Yet all
contribute to the revenue. The native 3 per cent.,
the Boer 7^ cent., the Uitlander 89^ per cent., so
that the anomalous condition exists that the native
helps to educate the Boer child, but gets nothing in
return.

7th. It is difficult to compress into a paragraph the
iniquitous working of the Pass Law. Each native
through his “ Baas ” must pay two shillings for a
pass, and wear a metal badge on his left arm above
the elbow. But many in the times of depression
during the last two years were often out of work.
Now no work meant no “ Baas,” no Baas, no pass, no
pass, imprisonment or fine, at one time up to £10.
The maximum penalty allowed by the law was only

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£5, but the limitations of law were only a small
thing where the native was concerned.

“With the Cape coloured people it was still worse. Some
of them were educated and had learned to become painters,
tailors, masons, saddlers, shoemakers. Now white men often
refused to work with them. Hence they were compelled to
seek small contracts themselves. But being their own masters
they could not get a pass ; and yet day by day they were
thrown into prison, seized on their way to or from church,
-chased from street into street, hunted in their own
bedrooms and their houses, and raided even at midnight for
non-compliance with an impossible law. Your readers may
find a dozen despatches in a recent Blue Book on this subject
alone.

“ In one respect it may be said the Transvaal has an
advantage over the Cape. There is a prohibitory Liquor
Law for natives, and if the law were properly enforced, it
would have been an unspeakable boon. But of what value
is ‘ prohibition that does not prohibit ’ ? Now the law is
evaded by a process of bribery and corruption to such an
extent that there has been far more drunkenness among the
natives of the Transvaal than of the Cape. Over 100,000
natives were labouring at the mines, and of these it has been
computed that 25,000 at least were daily incapacitated by
drink from performing the duties for which they were
engaged. Surely a lamentable condition of things. A
process, it may be described, for changing savages into
devils.

“Now, for the sake of comparison, consider the condition
-of things at the Cape :

1. The Constitution of the country allows no difference

whatever, either in Church or State, on account of
colour.

2. The natives can walk where they like.

3. Can trade on the same conditions as Boer and British.

4. Can own land to the full extent of his purchasing

power.

5. Can marry by the marriage law, which applies to all

classes alike, and without paying any fee to the
Government.

fi. Can obtain a grant for every properly conducted
school. I myself at one time had seven such in the

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Cape Colony under my charge, not one of which
could have been kept open apart from the Govern¬
ment grant.

7. But what is more important still, they have the
franchise on the same conditions as the Whites.
Sir A. Milner asked far less at the Bloemfontein
Conference for the Uitlanders than is freely
granted to the natives in the Cape Colony. So
numerous are their votes that they in reality hold
the balance of power. Mr. (Cronwright) Schreiner
says the Dutch at the Cape have the Kafirs with
them. It is true they succeeded in procuring
the support of Tengo Jabavu, and his Kafir paper,
the “ Imvo ” of the last election. But another
Kafir paper and its supporters were found on
the Progressive side. But though he maintains
that the Boers are in a large majority in the
Cape Colony even with their Kafir allies,
they failed to secure a majority of votes at
the last election. And it may be safely said that
the party will succeed at the next election in
gaining a majority which is able to win the native
vote.

“Now it will be manifest that no party dare be guilty of
seriously unjust enactments against the natives, lest they
lose their votes at the next election. They have thus secured
what Sir A. Milner asked for the Uitlanders, power to
protect themselves, and secure the redress of their own
grievances.

“Now, Sir, will any man, after reading the above, affirm
that the “ natives are treated with as much severity in the
Cape Colony, as in the Transvaal.” And it is in the light
of such facts that the manifesto of the Dutch Reformed
Church should be read.”

So far Mr. Phillips. With one or two unimportant errors
•of details in paragraph 7, about the last Cape election, he pre¬
sents us with a truthful and most forcible contrast built up of
hard facts. Every one knows too well that there are anoma¬
lies in the administration of justice to the native in the Cape
Colony. We have only to call to mind an instance which is
fresh in the public memory of what occurred the other day at
Swellendam. Things of this kind give rise to searchings of
heart as to whether the system of trial by jury does not
need to be modified in its application to natives in South
Africa. Then there is the lamentable condition of the

Langeberg prisoners of war indentured to compulsory
service for five years among the Dutch farmers of the
Western Province, and left to the irresponsible tender
mercies of their masters with no shadow of Government
inspection or oversight : a matter which will not bear looking
into too closely.

But these things are anomalies, they are contrary to the
spirit of Cape Colonial Law. The Charter of Justice, with
the Government Ordinances, on which our whole legal
system works in the Cape Colony, stands four square. Its
spirit is noble, it gives to every man, whatever the colour of
his face, the right to be a free citizen, and a chance to attain
any position in the community which is open to honest
intelligence and industry. And whence did that spirit
come It certainly did not emanate from those who were
the dwellers in the land, nor from their tyrannical masters,,
when Great Britain took possession of the Cape. It came
from the old country which was just then awaking to a
larger conception of true civil and political freedom.

The Transvaal Grondwet on the other* hand, which Mr.
Phillips quotes, is a worthy exponent of the narrow,,
reactionary spirit of the Boer and of those who have pandered
to his ignorance. The oppressive enactments by which the
native in the Transvaal is to be kept down in a position of
inferiority and servitude are not anomalies like some of the
things in the Cape Colony we deplore and are ashamed of,,
they are the natural outcome of the spirit of the Grondwet,.
and they tell us truly what the attitude of the Boer will be
towards the native wherever he has his own way. y HO J SAG i

The Reverend authors of the manifesto tell us that the
Dutch Reformed Church is not, and never has been, unwill¬
ing to give the gospel to the Black man. Yes and No !.
Certainly not so far as these particular ministers are
personally concerned. They have given an honourable
example struggling successfully as they have done to rouse
in their own church missionary zeal. They have worked
hard and well, and they have done good work. No one will
grudge them that testimony who is a well-wisher to the-
Native. But it would seem as if while absorbed in this
effort, and in the joy of its success within the range of their
own observation they had quite forgotten what is the real
attitude of the vast majority of the adherents of the Dutch
Reformed Church. That can only be understood by those
in such regions as the Transvaal and its borders, who in
their missionary efforts have found their path crossed, their

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labours retarded, their successes crushed by the undying-
hostility of the Boer. There are many Boers, good Christian
men, who are zealous and willing to give their native depen¬
dants a sort of Christian teaching, but it is doubtful whether
even these would allow that teaching to take a direction
which would give progressive advancement to the native in
status and education. Yet these are some of the results
without which the missionary’s work remains incomplete.

We need not go beyond the Cape Colony to know how bitterly
the Boer resents the education of the Black man. It was
only lately and within sight of Table Mountain that I listened
to a Dutch lady who laid down with almost vehement con¬
viction the following exposition of her views : — “ Education
of the coloured people was no use, it only spoiled them..
There ought to be a law made, that every coloured person
should be compelled to apprentice his children for three
years to the service of some white man. That is what they
were made for.” Yet this lady belongs to the inner circle of
revived religion in the Dutch Reformed Church. In another
house I had to sit in meekness under a wild tempest of
words in which were set forth the injustice of a Government
which assisted the black man to educate his children, whilst
the white people could not afford to spare theirs from the
work of the farm to go to school : yet these people were
land-owners on the northern slope of the Paarl mountain who
drove in to church every Sunday with a well set up equipage
and a pair of spanking horses. Travelling through the karroo
by train some years ago, I was approached by a Dutch
Reformed minister who with an incredulous yet deeply
serious air inquired if I really believed that these black
people had any receptive faculty for divine things, and
whether it were any use preaching the gospel to them. I
answered him in the spirit of gentleness, for I saw that
he meant no harm, and that he was a sincere seeker after-
truth.

To go back to the Transvaal — that there are many
missionary stations there is true enough. The missionary
is tolerated and looked down upon as belonging to an inferior
order of clerics. He must be discreet, he must teach his
flock to be submissive to their superiors and contented with
that state of life in which it has pleased Providence to place
them. There are some missionary societies to which the air
of the Transvaal is unfavourable. These are they who
believe that it is right to teach the native that he is a free
man, who ought to learn to stand on his own feet, and to*
become fitted to exercise the rights of a human being, the

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door of which should stand open to him. We are justified
in believing that what holds good of the Transvaal in such
matters would have held good in the Cape Colony also, were
it under Boer domination, and not under the rule of Great
Britain.

Let those who are contending for what they call the
■“ independence ” of the Boer Republics remember the
following facts. We cannot ignore the Black man as one of
the chief factors in the future of South Africa. On the sub¬
ject of the Black Man the Boer regime and that of Great
Britain are irreconcilable. Two dominant systems so vitally
different cannot co-exist side by side. The predominance of
the Boer is out of the question, that of Great Britain the only
possible alternative.

( 'Jpt‘ Jim is Lt(l.. Printers.

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THE SOUTH AFRICAN

VIGILANCE COMMITTEE.

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LIST OF EXECUTIVE :

Abrahamson, L.

Anderson, T. J., M.L.A.
Arderne, H. M.

Bailey, Amos, M.L.A.

His Worship the Mayor of
Cape Town (Mr. Coun¬
cillor T. Ball)

Brown, J. L. M., M.L.A.
Brydone, R. R.

Buissinne, W. T.

Cartwright, J. D., M.L.A.
Cloete, Henry, C.M.G-.

Cloete, Louis.

Ebden, Hon. Alfred.
Fairbridge, W. G.

Faure, Hon. Sir Pieter,
K.C.M.G., M.L.A.

Frost, Hon. J., M.L.A., C.M.G.
Fuller, T. E., M.L.A.

Gill, Sir David, K.C.B., LL.D.,
F.R.S.

Graham, Hon. T. L., Q.C.,
M.L.C.

Hewat, Dr. M,

Hewat, Dr. J.

Jagger, J. W.

Juta, Hon. Sir II., Q.C.,
M.L.A.

McClure, Rev. J. J.

Moffat, Rev. J. S., C.M.G.
Nuttall, Rev. E.

Owen Lewis, C. A.

Powell, Edmund.

Runciman, W., M.L.A.
Schermbrucker, Col., M.L.A.
Schreiner, Theo.

Smartt, Hon. Dr., M.L.A.
Smuts, Dr., M.L.A.

Solomon, R. Stuart.

Sprigg, Right Hon. Sir J.

Gordon, K. C.M.G., M.L.A
St. Leger, F. Y., M.L.A.
Steytler, E. S.

Struben, H. W.

Trollip, Gus.

Van Zyl, C. H.

Weil, Julius, M.L.A.

Zietsman, L., M.L.A

CHAIRMAN :

The Right Hon. SIR GORDON Sprigg, K.C.M.G., M.L.A.

HON. TREASURERS:

L. Abrahamson and R. Stuart Solomon.

SECRETARY :

William H. Low, M.A.

The South African Vigilance

Committee.

The Committee seeks to achieve the following objects : —

(1) To collect and focus the views of all sections of South
African citizens who are convinced of the essential
justice of Sir Alfred Milner’s policy.

(2) To set forth to the British public the necessity for
the prosecution of the present war to a thoroughly
successful termination.

(3) To make it clear to the citizens of the Empire in the
United Kingdom and in the Colonies that the
continuance of the Independence of the Republican
States in an;/ form must endanger the permanent
settlement and peaceful progress of South Africa, and
would lead to greater trouble than any we have
hitherto experienced.

(4) To counteract misleading statements made by the
anti-British Press or by the emissaries or supporters
of the Republics in iavour of any settlement short
of annexation.

(5) To organise public demonstrations, at suitable times
and in suitable places, in support of the policy for the
incorporation of the Republics in the British Empire.

(6) To supply literature to the various political organisa¬
tions in the United Kingdom, or elsewhere, and to
disseminate information among our Dutch fellow-
Colonists as to the aim and scope of British policy.

(7) To raise a fund to be called the South African
Imperial Defence Fund, to be used solely for the
promotion of the above object. No portion of the
Fund shall be available for contested elections or for
any political party purposes in South Africa.